Tag: military

Varsha was a short brown woman with long black hair and bit bigger ass than any of us could handle if we’d ever been allowed to handle it at all. When she first came to us on a rainy day she told Yolo she was married, she told Chit she was a widow, and she told Mattie she was gay. Me? Well me…me she told to fuck the hell off. We had no trouble believing all three stories were true, and I just pretended she was my little sister—until that got creepy.

###

Chit counted ammo in the shade of a travelers’ tent we erected on a sand bar. The awkward height and angle of the poles presented the lumpy aspect of a large boulder, but against the white gravel and sand near the river it must have looked like a target because in ten minutes Chit would be hurrying to rid himself of his current ballistic inventory in a rapid orderly fashion.

“See anything?”

Varsha swiveled to eye Chit in the tent; she left her arms akimbo and her feet in place.

“See anything?”

She swiveled back continuing to survey downriver. “No.”

Varsha’s denim leopard-patterned cargo-capris were tucked into a pair of laced on sune-ate. Those shin guards were so big for her they ran from her ankles up past her knees.

For more of my Ian McQue inspired writings check out the ‘terminus‘ tag.

“He did it. You said he’d do it. And he did it,” Sriram tossed his cap and coat onto the work table near the entrance to the lab. Both garments slumped to the floor like a dead body. He cursed in Hindi then put them back in the same spot on the table. They slid to the floor again. Sri kicked the bundle up under the work table as far back as his anger could get it. “Mador chod!”

Coffee closed the valves on the oxy-acetylene torch he used and set the tool down. He sloughed off his glove and reached under his mask to rub his eyes while Sriram stood there watching. Coffee cocked back the visor.

“Aren’t you pissed?”

“Actually I’m excited,” Coffee said. “Moving the shop will be good for all of us.”

“But he hung you out. If this fails it’s all on you…”

“And if it succeeds it’s all on him…”

“Yes! Yes. That’s what I’ve been saying.” Sri made a gesture with his hand and arm like he wanted to put his brain in Coffee’s skull.

The slender body of Ronnie James Dio crashed into the door frame. His shaven head clunked into the jam as he almost over shot the entrance. “We’re fucking moving the shop? We’re fucking moving the fucking shop?”

“Calm down, kid,” Sri said.

“You calm down, Sri.” Ronnie rubbed his scalp and looked for blood on his fingers. “Is it true Mr. Coffee. Are we moving the shop? Did you tell the Admiral we had to move the shop?”

For more of my Ian McQue inspired writings check out the ‘terminus‘ tag.

“I’ll use your name. Prepared for that?”

Coffee swallowed and asked, “You’d do that to me wouldn’t you?”

“If it’s as necessary as you say, I’d be doing it for you.”

Coffee vented air through his open mouth like a laugh or a fuck you or a crying of uncle. “The sure way or the slow way, huh?”

Admiral Tsien remained still and quiet at his desk. One hand lay on the surface holding down a manila folder marked [something cryptic but pertinent] the other propped up his head as he barely leaned to the side in a leather swivel chair.

Through the many-paned window behind Tsien and his chair, Coffee watched a tug pulling a Type: Recon to altitude. The Lebbeus—it was called—glided steadily right to left, heading north. Tsien licked his lips to speak, but first popped his fingertips from his forehead extending them skyward to mark the culmination of his thoughts. “Oorah.”

Coffee tugged at the soul patch in his goatee. “Oorah,” he said quietly. He then repeated the shape of the word soundlessly several times while still tugging the hair below his lip. Coffee shot up from his own chair and slapped the Admiral’s desk with both hands.

Tsien didn’t flinch.

Coffee leaned across the depth of the steel desk, locked eyes with a man no longer his friend, said, “Do it, Wu. It’s my life either way,” and then left the room.